In a new round of competition for the mainstream graphics solutions market Nvidia managed to strike first. Let’s find out how well the new solution will perform in real applications. Meet Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT sped up to its utmost by Leadtek Company.

Since we believe that the use of texture filtering optimizations is not justified in this case, the ATI and Nvidia graphics card drivers were set up to provide the highest possible quality of tri-linear and anisotropic filtering. Also, to ensure maximum image quality, we enabled transparent texture filtering - Adaptive (multi-sampling) antialiasing for ATI Catalyst and Antialiasing – Transparency: multisampling for Nvidia ForceWare. As a result, our ATI and Nvidia driver settings looked as follows:

ATI Catalyst:

Catalyst A.I.: Standard

Mipmap Detail Level: High Quality

High Quality AF: On

Wait for vertical refresh: Always Off

Enable Adaptive Anti-Aliasing: On/Quality

Method: Multi-sampling

Temporal Anti-Aliasing: Off

Other settings: default

Nvidia ForceWare:

Texture filtering - Quality: High quality

Texture filtering - Trilinear optimization: Off

Texture filtering – Anisotropic sample optimization: Off

Vertical sync: Force off

Antialiasing - Gamma correction: On

Antialiasing - Transparency: Multisampling

Other settings: default

For our tests we used the following games and benchmarks:

First-Person 3D Shooters

Battlefield 2142

Bioshock

Call of Juarez

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Far Cry

F.E.A.R. Extraction Point

Half-Life 2: Episode One

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

Third-Person 3D Shooters

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition

Tomb Raider: Legend

RPG

Gothic 3

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Strategies

Company of Heroes

Synthetic Benchmarks

Futuremark 3DMark05

Futuremark 3DMark06

We selected the highest possible graphics quality level in each game using standard tools provided by the game itself from the gaming menu. The games configuration files weren’t modified in any way. Games supporting DirectX 10 were tested only in this mode. Performance was measured with the games’ own tools or, if not available, manually with Fraps utility version 2.9.1. We also measured the minimum speed of the cards where possible.

With a few exceptions, the tests were performed in the following standard resolutions: 1280x1024/960, 1600x1200 and 1920x1200/1440. We used “eye candy” mode everywhere, where it was possible without disabling the HDR/Shader Model 3.0/Shader Model 4.0. Namely, we ran the tests with enabled anisotropic filtering as well as MSAA 4x antialiasing. We enabled them from the game’s menu. If this was not possible, we forced them using the appropriate driver settings of Catalyst and ForceWare drivers

Leadtek WinFast PX8800 GT Extreme will be competing against the following graphics accelerators participating in our test session: